One of the objectives of the Founders was to ensure that candidate
platforms and campaigns addressed the needs and concerns of each state
equally. The Electoral College was created to ensure candidates
would pay attention to every state’s needs, since some states obviously
overwhelmed others in population. However, this is hardly working
today, as candidates spend the majority of their time, money and energy
wooing a handful of swing states, and ignoring the worries of most
states - large and small.

“The Electoral College provides the potential for any cohesive
special interest concentrated in a large, competitive state to exercise
disproportionate power. Wall Street workers in New York, movie
industry employees in California, and those earning a living in the
energy business in Texas could, in theory, swing their states to one
candidate or the other. Do we really want a system of electing
the president that provides such potential to special interests?

Disproportionate power to any group is difficult to reconcile with
political equality. As James Madison proclaimed at the
Constitutional Convention, ‘local considerations must give way to the
general interest.’” (George C. Edwards III, Why the Electoral
College is Bad for America)

State legislatures have the authority to replace their state’s
appointed electors after the popular vote with their own instead of
following the decision of the parties. Florida’s Republican
Legislature was prepared to do so in 2000 if the Supreme Court had not
decided in Bush’s favor in Bush vs. Gore. Consider this excerpt
from the Washington Post (July 19, 2004):

“Suppose that some of the electors -- the people who under our
constitutional system conduct the real presidential election some weeks
after voters go to the polls -- aren't actually selected by the voters.Impossible? Not if you give a close reading to the Supreme Court's
decision in the case of Bush v. Gore, which finally settled the
presidential election of 2000, if not to everyone's satisfaction. Under
that decision, there is no guarantee that the electors who are decisive
in choosing the next president of the United States will themselves be
selected by the people of the United States.That's because the justices ruled in that case that state legislatures
have unlimited authority to determine whether citizens in their
respective states shall be allowed to vote for president at all."The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for
electors for the President of the United States," the court said,
"unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as
the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral
College."Imagine, now, a state in which the same party controls both houses of
the legislature and the governor's office. There would presumably be no
partisan impediment to the state legislature, with the governor's
approval, deciding that the majority party in state government shall
control the state's electoral vote, regardless of any popular vote in
the state.The ordinary protection against this sort of usurpation is presumably
the "outrage factor" -- the idea that no legislature would risk the
wrath of the citizenry by usurping their right to vote. But in 2000,
unfortunately, Florida demonstrated that legislators might well be
willing to risk the outrage if they have a case, no matter how
contestable, that the electors they are choosing actually do represent
majority sentiment in the state."

The four elections in which the president-elect lost the popular vote are:

1824 – Adams over Jackson

Popular vote margin: 44,804 - favoring Jackson

Electoral College margin: 15 - favoring Jackson

*John Q. Adams received fewer electoral votes and fewer popular votes
than Andrew Jackson, but, as outlined by the Constitution, when no
candidate receives the majority of the Electoral College vote the
decision is turned over to the House of Representatives. There, 13
state delegations voted for John Q. Adams, 7 for Jackson and 3 for
Crawford. (www.nara.gov)

1876 – Hayes over Tilden

Popular vote margin: 264,292 - favoring Tilden

Electoral College margin: 1 - electing Hayes

1888 – Harrison over Cleveland

Popular vote margin: 100,456 - favoring Cleveland

Electoral College margin: 65 - electing Harrison

2000 – Bush over Gore

Popular vote margin: 543,895 (the largest so far) - favoring Gore

Electoral College margin: 5 - electing Bush

*Note: Some sources also consider 1960 a contested election. Although
most believe Kennedy won the popular vote and the electoral college,
some believe that there exists an alternative result that puts Nixon on
top in popular votes. However, this election is not as harshly
contested as the above four.

It is only luck that has saved us from more situations like these where
the White House is not delivered to the President-Elect. Statistics
show that close elections possess a very high possibility of this
distorted result. Several elections throughout the 19th and 20th
centuries have been so close that a small difference in votes – a
fraction of 1 percent of the national vote – would have presented a
different winner.

Some Electoral College supporters say the magnification of the
margin of victory that the institution creates is actually beneficial,
at least to the president. Their argument appears to stem from a
hope that people might ignore the popular vote, focusing on the
electoral vote instead and offering the administration more credibility
and legitimacy.

Meanwhile fewer and fewer voices are heard in the nationwide
contest. In 1996 we saw the number of competitive states drop
from 1992. 2000 had fewer than 1996 and in 2004 the trend
continued with just 11 states considered competitive. In 2008 we
might well have less than 10 competitive states.

Because the Electoral College system is so geographically influenced,
candidates for president are hindered when choosing a running
mate. While a candidate may want to pick his or her running mate
based on leadership skills or stances on political issues, the
Electoral College has made candidates increasingly dependent on
geography. Since fewer and fewer states are now receiving
attention from campaigns due to a decrease in the number of
"battleground states", future vice presidential candidates may be
chosen based solely upon where they are from. While this
strategic thinking on the part of presidential candidates may help them
win elections, it does not appear to be in the best interest of the
American people.

The Electoral College system not only removes the voice of a
majority of the country, but in the end distorts the will of
voters. George Edwards III explains, “There is typically a
substantial disparity in almost all elections between the national
popular vote a candidate receives and that candidate’s percentage of
the electoral vote. In the election of 1860, although Stephen A.
Douglas was second in popular votes, he was fourth in the Electoral
College. Although he won 74 percent as many popular votes as were
cast for Abraham Lincoln, his electoral vote was just 6.7 percent of
Lincoln’s. Douglas’s popular vote was 162 percent of John C.
Breckinridge’s, yet he received only 16.7 percent as many electoral
votes as Breckinridge. And Douglas’s popular vote exceeded John
Bell’s by more than two times, but Bell had three times as many votes
in the Electoral College.” (George C. Edwards III, Why the
Electoral College is Bad for America)

In almost every state today, electors are permitted to appoint
their own replacements if they cannot show up on the day electors
convene and vote in their state's capital. Sometimes, the
replacements are literally found by roaming the halls in search for
candidates, as was Mr. J. J. Levy of Michigan in 1948. However,
when the vote was actually taking place for Michigan that year, Mr.
Levy had to be restrained by the other electors – pledged to Thomas
Dewey and Earl Warren - from voting for Harry Truman and Alben
Barkely. Evidentially believing in the premise of a direct
election Levy was later quoted as saying: “I thought we had to vote for
the winning candidate.”

When there is a tie in the Electoral College, the election is
thrown into Congress, with the House picking the president and the
Senate choosing the vice president. In the House, each state is
given one vote, an even further deviation from the principle of one
person one vote. Furthermore, the whole setup provides the chance
for a president and vice president to be selected from different
parties.

If by chance no vice presidential candidate manages to obtain a
majority in the Senate, there exists no provision in the Constitution
providing an explanation of the procedure to follow. There is
also no provision that addresses the possibility of senators or
representatives running for president or vice president and voting for
themselves.

One of the reasons the Founders created the Electoral College was
to prevent a favorite son effect, in which citizens of a state would
vote for a candidate who is also from their state solely for that
reason. But in fact, the Electoral College has turned out to
promote the favorite son effect instead of suppress it. Note that
every single president, with the exception of James K. Polk in 1844,
has won his home state.

*Note: The Federal Elections Commission currently, and incorrectly,
explains the favorite son effect as being prevented by parties
selecting their presidential and vice presidential nominees from
different states.

Based on the current allocation of electoral votes, a candidate
could win the presidency with electoral majorities in only 11
states. Conversely, a candidate could win every vote in 40 states
and still lose the presidency.

"According to the Constitution, electors must vote for at least one
candidate from a state other than their own. This is why political
parties usually select presidential and vice presidential candidates
from different states. If candidates on one ticket were from the same
state, that state's electors could not vote for the ticket.

Just before he was nominated as the Republican candidate for vice
president in 2000, Dick Cheney owned a home in Texas. Before the
election he changed his legal residence to Wyoming, his birth state,
which he had represented in Congress. Some Texas voters questioned the
move and filed suit over the legitimacy of giving Texas' electoral
votes to Bush, who had been Texas governor, and Cheney. Cheney's
residence in Wyoming was ruled satisfactory in court."

FairVote research is cited in support of the National Popular Vote plan in Indiana, because "every vote cast for president should be equally important and equally coveted, whether it originates in California, Connecticut or Crawfordsville."

FairVote's Rob Richie writes that the Electoral College deepens political inequality, and explains why the National Popular Vote plan is our best opportunity to ensure that every vote for president is equally valued.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation magazine, highlights FairVote's research in an important piece on the "broad support" growing in the states for the National Popular Vote plan to elect the president.